


Just remember I can be poison.

by everydaytomholland



Series: Pangs [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Gen, Illnesses, Minor Injuries, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 15:19:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16221812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everydaytomholland/pseuds/everydaytomholland
Summary: May Parker doesn't react well to finding out the truth about Spider-Man





	Just remember I can be poison.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last of my pre-written stories, don't know if I'll post again before uni finishes next month
> 
> Title comes from the Bardot song 'Poison' (if you know who Sophie Monk is, Bardot is the girl group she used to be in)
> 
> Enjoy!

“What the fuck!” Welp. That wasn’t exactly how Peter wanted May to find out his secret, but he figured it was out now, he might as well deal with it. He didn’t expect her reaction to be quite so… crazy. She was screaming and crying and yelling. He tried to approach her to calm her down but she just ignored him. After a few more minutes of yelling she seemed to calm down, but then she looked at him with something like contempt in her eyes.   
“Get out.” He was stunned.   
“What? May, please. Let’s just- can we talk about this?” Crap. He could feel the tears building up and heard it in his voice.   
“Leave, Peter. I don’t want you here.” Her voice was cold. He quickly shoved some clothes in a backpack, put his mask back on and climbed out the window. 

He had barely managed to calm himself down when Karen alerted him that Mr Stark was calling him.   
“Hey kid.”  
“Hey Mr Stark.” Peter tried to sound cheerful but he wasn’t very successful.   
“What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy to have the suit back.”  
“I am! I’m so grateful Mr Stark it’s just that…”  
“What?”  
“May found out.” His mentor was silent on the other end, “She saw me in the suit and went crazy. She kicked me out.”  
“Kicked you out?! Are you okay? You need me to talk to her? Do you need somewhere to stay?”  
“Yeah, Ned said I can stay with him tonight. I don’t know what I’m gonna do after that, they can’t afford to have another person in the house.”  
“Why don’t we cross that bridge when we get to it? I’ll bet you anything your aunt will come to her senses tomorrow and everything will work itself out. If not, you can always come and stay upstate. You’ve still got a room here, you’re welcome any time; you just have to ask.”  
“Thanks Mr Stark.”

May texted him later that night; ‘I love you. I just need a bit of time to process. Come home tomorrow night. May xx’

He went in through the door the next night, rather than climbing through his window like normal, he didn’t want to risk making things worse. May was watching the tv and sipping a glass of wine when he came in. He almost cried in relief when she immediately wrapped him up in a hug.  
“I’m so sorry May. I didn’t wanna keep it a secret, I just didn’t know how to tell you.”  
“Shh, it’s okay. I’m not crazy about the idea of you being some superhero, but I’ll get there.”  
“Mr Stark said he can talk to you, if you want?”  
“No. I think I need to deal with this on my own, without Tony Stark interfering.” That was weird.   
“Okay, well, if you change your mind?”  
“Sure, honey.” They spent the rest of the night cuddled on the couch watching trashy tv, like normal.

After that, everything went back to normal; at least for a few weeks. Until Peter started getting sick. It started as a small gut feeling. He didn’t think anything of it at first, just assumed he was hungry because admittedly, he was usually hungry. He had thought that his enhanced biology meant he couldn’t get sick, but as things slowly got worse he knew that he was wrong. He’d spent most of his gym class on a Friday not having to reign in his strength for once, he felt so miserable and nauseous that he was actually struggling. They were in the middle of a game of dodgeball when he was hit with a massive wave of nausea and had to run to the bathroom, only just making it in time to throw up into the toilet. He didn’t know how long he spent in there, sprawled over the toilet with his stomach lurching, before Ned came in to check on him. They waited until Peter thought he could take a break from vomiting, and Ned walked/half-carried him to the nurse’s office. They had several hours left in the day, but the nurse took one look at him and called May to take him home. He was glad that it was a Friday and he hopefully wouldn’t miss any school. 

He didn’t patrol that entire weekend. He was feeling better by Saturday night but May had insisted that he stay at home just in case. Even Tony had called to ask why he wasn’t patrolling, then offered him the medical services at the compound when he mentioned he had been feeling sick but he insisted it wasn’t necessary.

Everything settled down again for a while, but then the headaches started. Peter had never cursed his superfast metabolism as much as he did during this time; he couldn’t take painkillers to settle the ache without potentially overdosing on them, so he went without. The headaches brought with them a whole host of consequences. When they hit, it made it almost impossible for him to concentrate in class, so despite his best efforts, his grades were starting to suffer. It was also impossible for him to sleep when he had a headache so the exhaustion also wasn’t helping things. He’d had more than a few dizzy spells and had even fainted once (though thankfully he was home alone at the time so he just didn’t tell anyone). Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t able to keep his dizzy spells a secret for long. He was on patrol when a big dizzy spell hit. He didn’t remember crashing to the ground, but when he looked at his very obviously broken wrist, he knew that was what had happened. 

He didn’t even have a chance to call for help before Iron Man was picking him up from under his arms and flying him all the way to the compound. He was glad he was still wearing his mask to cover his blush when he saw Captain America reading a book as they walked though one of the living areas.   
“How did you manage to do this, kid?” Tony asked while one of the nurses set Peter’s arm. Peter didn’t mind being injured at the compound, it was the only time he got painkillers that worked for him.   
“I don’t really know,” he admitted meekly, “one minute I was up in the air, the next I was on the ground.”  
“Right. You haven’t been sick again have you?”  
“I- I was feeling a little dizzy right before I fell.” Tony just gave him a stern look.   
“Well there’s your problem, genius. Is this the first time this has happened?”  
“First time I fell. I’ve been getting a lot of headaches, had a few dizzy spells.”  
“Geez kid, I swear you’re going to send me to an early grave. From now on you’ve got an 11pm curfew on school nights, I want you to be getting enough sleep. And drink plenty of water.”  
“Sure thing, Mr Stark.”

Peter was glad when everything seemed to settle down in time for Christmas. He spent the 24th and 25th with May, doing their usual traditions they used to do with Ben. Then on the 26th he went to the compound and had a big Christmas feast with all of the Avengers. Though things had settled down since the airport fight in Leipzig, he still felt a little awkward around some of the members of ‘Team Cap’; but not after that day. He built up a bit of a friendship with the Falcon where they just constantly made fun of each other. He accidentally started a prank war with Hawkeye. He almost instantly made friends with Wanda since the two of them were younger than everyone else. He still felt nervous around Cap but he managed to make it through a complete sentence without stuttering, so he counted it as a win. Despite all of this, the best part of his day was his gift from Tony. Well, one of the gifts – the man threw money around like crazy. He was going to start spending every other weekend at the compound. It would involve training with the other Avengers, but the best part was that Mr Stark was inviting him into his workshop where they would be working TOGETHER on upgrades for his suit as well as other tech for the team. His only disappointment was that it wasn’t starting until mid-January because Tony had several conferences over the next few weekends. 

Despite this, it wasn’t long before the day of his first visit came. Happy had offered to pick him up from school, but May had insisted that he have dinner with her since she wouldn’t see him until Monday evening (he was going straight from the compound to school on Monday morning). SO they had an early dinner and Happy picked him up at 7pm. He didn’t get far into the 90 minute car ride before he started feeling tired, he put his headphones on and dozed in the backseat; if Happy found anything weird about this from the usually energetic kid, he didn’t say anything. Once they arrived at the compound, he said hello to Wanda and headed straight to Tony’s workshop. Peter should’ve been more excited, but he was just so tired. Tony was letting him tinker with one of the older suits, seeing what he could do without any outside help, but Peter was finding it harder and harder to concentrate. All he could heard was his pounding heartbeat in his ears, then he was hit with a huge wave of nausea and dizziness. He looked up and wondered for a moment how Tony could be working like that when the world was clearly on fire; but in the next moment he realised that something was wrong with him.  
“Mr Stark,” his voiced slurred, struggling to form the words, “I don’t feel so good.” Tony looked up from his work just in time to see the boy’s eyes roll back into his head, and only just managed to catch him before he hit the ground. He tried lightly slapping Peter’s cheek and calling his name, but the boy was completely unresponsive. He picked Peter’s unconscious body up, back protesting at the extra weight, and yelled out.   
“FRI, TELL BRUCE TO GO TO THE MEDBAY AND GET HELEN CHO HERE, NOW!”

Tony was carrying Peter to the Medbay himself, it would be faster than waiting for someone to come and help him. He had only just exited the elevator on the medbay floor when Peter went rigid in his arms. They fell to the ground as Peter’s entire body started seizing.   
“BRUCE!” Tony yelled. The man in question came running into the corridor and jumped straight into action.   
“Get him on his side, we need to clear his airway.” They did that and waited until Peter’s body stopped jerking. Bruce then helped him carry Peter the rest of the way and got the still unconscious boy onto a bed. Bruce ran some quick tests the look of concern permanently etched on his face doing little to calm Tony down. Bruce took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose.   
“Just tell me, Bruce. How bad is it?”  
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s causing it but his vitals are all over the place and his organs are barely handling it. I’m going to need to put him on life support, to ease some of the stress on his body.” 

Tony felt like he’d been winded. Over the years, he’d gotten good at handling his own panic attacks when they came, but that went out the window now. His vision was blurry and he couldn’t breathe. Bruce told FRIDAY to bring either Steve or Nat down there to help Tony while he tended to Peter. Steve came in moments later and slowly but surely managed to calm Tony down. By the time the man was slumped into Steve’s chest and breathing steady, a ventilator was breathing for Peter. Tony shakily moved to the boy’s bedside and clasped his left hand between both of his own.   
“You should call his aunt.” That was Steve. He didn’t even look up before responding.   
“No. Not until Helen’s here. Not until I have more information I can give her.” Steve knew there was no sense in arguing with the clearly distraught man, so he said nothing. 

Thankfully, Helen arrived within the hour. She asked Tony a lot of questions about Peter’s symptoms and recent health issues. Tony found it impossible to read her reactions of what was happening, but that all changed after she took a blood test. She took a quick glance at the results and immediately sprang into action.   
“We need to pump his stomach and give him a round of blood dialysis. Do you have the equipment?” She asked Tony.   
“Yeah, I- what?” he was thoroughly confused.   
“He’s got a textbook case of antifreeze poisoning. It’s treatable but we have to act quickly. If he weren’t enhanced he’d be dead already.”   
“Someone’s been poisoning him?” Tony’s breathing was becoming erratic again.   
“Tony, I need you to focus.” She said sternly, “You can worry about exacting revenge later, right now we need to make sure he survives the night.”

It had been a long night. Tony didn’t even remember falling asleep, but when he woke up it was quiet, except for the hissing of the ventilator and the beeping of the heart monitor. He looked up and saw Wanda sitting on the other side of the bed; tendrils of red energy flicking between her hands and Peter’s head. “He’s doing better.” She said, before Tony could ask the question. “Not out of the woods completely, but his enhanced healing seems to have kicked in finally so hopefully it’s gonna be okay.”  
“Do we know how it got in his system in the first place?” She smiled sadly at him.   
“You haven’t figured it out yet?”  
“Well, I assume it was in something he ate?” he froze, “his aunt.”  
“You know he saw all the signs? I saw it in his head. He just loves her so much he couldn’t put it together to figure out what she’s been doing to him.” Wanda came around and wrapped Tony up in a gentle hug as he broke down crying.

Both a lot and not very much happened over the next two weeks. May was arrested. She’d confessed to what she’d done so there wasn’t going to be a trial, she was facing up to 10 years in jail (more if Peter died but Tony refused to consider that possibility). Thanks to his influence and abundance of money, Tony had secured guardianship of Peter, he wanted to adopt him but was waiting to talk to the boy first. There’d been a media storm after someone found out about Tony’s connection and relationship with Peter. Thankfully they only knew about Peter and not his other identity, and were quick to back off after Tony threatened legal action. Not much had happened with Peter. He was still in a coma. His body was slowly but surely healing from the damage May had inflicted, but he was still too weak to be taken off the ventilator. Tony had barely slept – only when Steve got Wanda to force him – and spent all of his spare time at Peter’s bedside. Peter’s friends had been determined to see him – he’d never admit it but MJ definitely scared Tony – but he’d insisted; promising to call and send a car as soon as Peter woke up.

It finally happened in the first week of February. Tony had been reading and responding to emails next to Peter’s bed when the boy started choking on the tube in his mouth. Tony started freaking out and called Bruce down to help. Bruce rushed to Peter’s side and started smiling. “Are you- are you smiling? What the fuck is wrong with you?! He’s choking!” Bruce just looked at him, still smiling.   
“I know it seems counterintuitive, but when someone chokes on the ventilator like this, it’s a good thing. It means he’s breathing over the tube.” Tony smiled too.

It was a couple of tense days before the boy finally woke up. 

Tony was dozing in his seat when he heard a hoarse voice next to him. “Mr Stark?”  
“KID!” the boy winced, “sorry. How’re you feeling? What do you remember?”   
“mmm, feeling crappy. Better now. Knew you’d help me.” He smiled and fell back asleep. Tony knew that he’d have to have a few tough conversations with the boy in the coming days, but for now he was content with just holding the boys hand between his own while they slept.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments/kudos :)
> 
> Follow/send prompts to my instagram @everydaytomholland


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